This week, however, I did a clean install on my aging Acer AspireOne netbook to see how well the new OS, also known as Raring Ringtail, would perform on the kind of low-powered machine for which it was designed. The modest specs—1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of memory and a 40GB hard drive—seemed perfect for that [...]

I’ve recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS). The main advantage of a LTS distribution is that once you clean it up, it stays like that for two years.

Let’s login to our new machine and take some initial steps to secure our system. For this article I’m going to assume your username is ubuntu.

This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu 12.10 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even [...]

As Ubuntu 12.10 has been released, after downloading Ubuntu many of you would be wondering what to do next with your newly installed Ubuntu.

The first two parts of this series gave you a basic introduction to Linux and helped get your Ubuntu 11.10 system installed. Now I’ll go over how to get started customizing your new Ubuntu 11.10 installation. I say get started, because there are so many possibilities as far as what can be changed or installed, [...]

In this month’s print edition of PC World, reader David Crickmer mentions he’d like to see a series about getting started in Linux. Since this blog largely revolves around the portly penguin, I thought I’d give it a go …And I have chosen Ubuntu for the guide

Install Java, Flash, every codec you’ll ever need and much more, all at once. It’s heavily proprietary, but Ubuntu Restricted Extras is probably the first package you should install in Ubuntu.

The latest Ubuntu is slick and sublime, and while it gets a lot right, there’s still some essential tweaks you can do to make the most of your new install.

Ramesh Jha on the SUDOBits blog offered some good advice on 10 things to do after installing Ubuntu 11.10. This is my take on the same topic. Unless otherwise stated, most of the extra software can be installed using Ubuntu Software Center.

Plenty of guides helps you after having installed Ubuntu 11.10 – here’s a bunch of links for your post-installation work

How are you going to customize your desktop? It is an important question, one that by now you should have given some thought to as you use Ubuntu to surf the web, send email and generally use as you would any other computer.

We did encounter some amount of instability in the new Ubuntu Unity mostly because of Compiz, but overall we believe Ubuntu 11.04 is going to be a release to look forward for. Leaving all that aside for now, let’s just concentrate on things you could do after installing Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

If you’ve just upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, there are probably a few things you’ll miss, so here is how to get them back as well as some other things you may find useful.

Does this sound familiar to you? You have taken the plunge and install Ubuntu on your computer. The next moment, you have no idea what to do next and where to head.

Just like any other operating system, there are a number of things to do after installing Ubuntu for the first time. Even if you just installed the latest version of Ubuntu, you will want to make some updates to insure you’ve got all the latest software versions. With that in mind, here are some of [...]

Here’s a small guide to 10 Alternatives to the default applications in Ubuntu 10.10

This tutorial is targeted at netbook users, that want to streamline and tweak their Linux. Though it’s perfectly suitable for other people, provided they have the necessary knowledge. It has been tested on and meant mainly for the new Ubuntu 10.04 release on an ASUS eeePC 1005PE

Over the past year I have developed quite a fondness for Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook edition. Most of my laptops dual-boot it and my wife runs it full time on her little IBM Thinkpad X40. The Netbook edition works great on the 12” or smaller monitors.

Ubuntu isn’t as fully featured as it should be from the start. Learn a bit about the OS, and get up and running with some interesting and helpful tools by following this guide.

Though Ubuntu is now right up there with Mac OS X and Windows in terms of usability, it is still a bit different from those proprietary counterparts. Besides watching out for a few missteps common among first-timers, there are a few things newcomers should do to maximize their enjoyment of Ubuntu.

Though Ubuntu is now right up there with Mac OS X and Windows in terms of usability, it is still a bit different from those proprietary counterparts. Besides watching out for a few missteps common among first-timers, there are a few things newcomers should do to maximize their enjoyment of Ubuntu.

UBUNTU 10.10, the latest release of the popular Linux distribution, is pretty darned efficient, but a few tweaks and utilities can make it run even better.

Ubuntu is a great operating system, especially the version 10.10. It comes with most needed software pre-installed. However, owing to licensing issues some packages are not installed by default. I recommend a few tweaks to polish your fresh installation. It takes lesser time and effort to prepare Ubuntu for a ride than it takes Windows [...]

This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that [...]

So you’ve downloaded Ubuntu 10.10, made yourself a freshly minted copy and installed it with haste. Now what? Here is our guide to the top 10 post-install must-do’s that will help ensure you get off to a marvellous start with the Maverick Meerkat.

Here I am, in a fresh Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) install – and it’s not what I’m used to. Sure, it is a great operating system, but it also needs a lot of tweaking when you first install it.

Since most tips you see for Ubuntu are geared toward new user, we’re going to take it up a notch and offer some tips for the Ubuntu power users. These tips will vary in scope and level of expertise but all will improve your Ubuntu Linux experience.

I recently did a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 on my Dell netbook (because the upgrade process didn’t work smoothly) and in doing so I re did some of my Ubuntu tweaks I am used to.

This step-by-step tutorial was created for the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) operating system and it will teach you how to change the looks of your Linux desktop into an eye-candy, practical, simple and modern one. In other words, to pimp your desktop and change its looks: